What We Learned: Teen drama for NHL rookie sensations

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it)

Every year, many NHL teams will grant a small number of teenagers the requisite maximum nine-game tryout before sending them back to junior or, in some cases, to the AHL.

This gives the teams the chance to evaluate where those players are in their development paths, and where they stand relative to both expectations and actual NHL talent. It also gives players the opportunity to show off their skills and potentially impress their way onto the full-time roster.

It is, however, exceptionally rare for teenagers to stick around with their NHL teams, because in the vast majority of cases, they simply aren’t ready for the rigors of playing 82 games against grown men who happen to be the best in the world at what they do.

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But it’s usually nine games and that’s it. Perhaps as it should be. For one thing, the vast majority of these guys likely need more seasoning, and for others who might be on the borderline, it often makes more sense for their teams to slide the contracts by keeping them down in junior for as much time as possible, as long as it isn’t detrimental to their development.

How rare are teenagers in this league? Since 2007-08, only 123 teenagers playing their first seasons have gotten into any games at all, and if you extend that out to guys who played more than their nine-game tryout, the number drops to 78. Obviously the latter number will go up in a few weeks when tryouts start expiring and guys who are clearly ready stick with their teams. But that is still an extremely small portion of the league’s 690 roster spots going to teenagers.

The above graph doesn’t include guys like Sam Bennett, who suffered injuries which limited their games played to fewer than 10 in the regular season, but those cases are extremely rare, as you might expect.

Meanwhile, there were another 168 guys who played their age-20 seasons in the NHL, so it’s obvious this is the age at which many teams are more than comfortable easing guys into the lineup (in a lot of cases, that probably also has a lot to do with the fact that they’ve already opted to slide the ELC once and probably don’t really care to do it again).

This year, however, it feels as though the league’s crop of rowdy teens is perhaps better than ever.

Perhaps it’s the Eichel/McDavid hype playing a role, and therefore there’s some “top-end” feel to the action where there often hasn’t been in previous years. What’s interesting, though, is while we’re talking about guys who “stuck” in their teens, and usually a little less than 10 per year make the cut, there are only eight first-year teenagers being used in the NHL this year at all, down significantly from the usual average of more than 14, and the lowest number since 2007-08, when there were 12.

That number doesn’t include guys who are still teenagers, like Aaron Ekblad, who has last season under his belt, but again, those guys are very, very rare. Almost all rookies come spend the majority of their first years at 19, not 18. For instance, Jack Eichel will turn 19 in a little more than two weeks, and Connor McDavid does the same in mid-January. Of the eight teenagers currently looking to make their clubs in their first year, only Daniel Sprong, who’s no guarantee to make the Pittsburgh Penguins but whose chances are bolstered by the predictable prolonged absence of Pascal Dupuis, will still be 18 by early February.

Obviously, some of these guys are not going to make the cut. One wonders how much of a chance Mikko Rantanen is going to have to make the Colorado Avalanche, for instance, but the thing you have to say for these guys is that the majority of them look like they’re in pretty good shape. Really, only Sprong, Rantanen and Jared McCann in Vancouver seem like they’re even on the bubble. Ehlers is all but guaranteed to make the Jets.

Eichel and McDavid are givens. Noah Hanifin and Dylan Larkin would have to make it very obvious that their teams should cut them, but they haven’t yet.

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Every team and its needs are, of course, different. In addition to the cap politics of sending a guy down just because he’s only marginally ready and you’d prefer not to burn a year of his ELC — as Arizona did midway through camp with Dylan Strome, for example — there’s also the consideration of whether the team has a lot of depth at such-and-such a position, and how they aim to use the player.

To take it back to Joe Thornton’s rookie year, when he went 3-4-7 in 55 games, that feels very much like misusing an asset, and teams will still do that today for one reason or another. In the Bruins’ case, it was to sell hope coming off an abysmal season (because clearly he wasn’t ready for prime time), but last year with the Flames they ended up torching a year of Sam Bennett’s ELC because they made the playoffs and he made them better, even if he didn’t help them in the one extra game that ended up bumping him up. In Edmonton, too, they used Leon Draisaitl for 37 games simply because they literally didn’t even have enough NHL centers on hand.

That might be what happens with Sprong (who else is going to play the left wing on that team?) but everyone else is probably going to have to flat-out earn their spot. And again, it looks like most of them will.

In some ways, this is actually one of the weaker teen rookie classes of the last several years, just based on the number of young guys coming into the league. Part of that, I’d think, is the result of the cap considerations discussed above; teams now understand that having young, contributing players stay on their ELCs for as long as possible is extremely valuable. It took a while, but the league seems to have largely gotten there. If guys aren’t 100 percent NHL-ready, and capable of actually playing better than a slightly more expensive replacement player (or if the team has real Cup aspirations and a cap crunch), teams are going to be a lot less shy about shipping them back to the CHL.

Despite the fact that there are now fewer teenagers in the league than there has been in quite a while, though, there likely won’t be any classes in the next decade-plus that will be able to replicate its sheer quality.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: Can’t wait for the next lockout. It’s gonna be so great.

Arizona Coyotes: Well folks the Coyotes are 2-0 after games with LA and Pittsburgh, and Mike Smith has allowed two goals on 69 shots. If you’ve been thinking about getting supplies to help you survive the apocalypse, now’s the time to start buying in bulk.

Boston Bruins: It’s starting nice and early this year: “The refs are out to get us boo hoo hoo!” And this is a team that accuses the Habs of whining all the time.

Buffalo Sabres: “Hey, so, anyone have a goalie they want to get rid of?”

Calgary Flames: “Funny you should ask, Sabres.”

Carolina Hurricanes: Hurricanes outshoot Detroit 47-19. Hurricanes lose 4-3 in regulation. Want to guess who was between the Carolina pipes for this one?

Chicago Blackhawks: Chicago wants to trade for a defenseman, but as long as Panarin keeps putting up points like this it might not be necessary.

Colorado Avalanche: Brad Stuart was a healthy scratch for the first two games of the year. They just signed him to a $3.6 million AAV for the next two years. This is gonna go well.

Columbus Blue Jackets: From 17:24 of the third on Friday to 5:48 of the first period Saturday — a space of 8:14 — Columbus allowed six goals to the Rangers and lost two games as a result. That’s bad.

Dallas Stars: The Stars haven’t won in Denver in seven tries? Time to start training at altitude, guys.

Detroit Red Wings: Dylan Larkin is seriously making things happen for the Red Wings through two games. He’s making it tough to send him away.

Edmonton Oilers: This Connor McDavid kid is terrible. Where are all the goals???????

Florida Panthers: Jaromir Jagr already has two goals. Bless his ancient heart.

Los Angeles Kings: After that awful garbage thing Dean Lombardi wrote about what a terrible person Mike Richards is for Personally Betraying him, it would be in some ways karmic for the team to struggle like this again all season.

Minnesota Wild: A bit of controversy over team-provided doctors in Colorado not checking on Nino Niederreiter’s potential concussion for a while after he may have suffered it. Some wonder whether it’s gamesmanship, or the Avs simply not having enough doctors in the building. In either case, this really speaks well for making it the responsibility of the home team and not the league to have doctors on hand and paid.

Montreal Canadiens: The Canadiens pummeled the Bruins despite only going 1 for 6 on the power play. They really just live in Boston’s kitchen at this point.

Nashville Predators: The Preds aren’t playing great right now but as long as Pekka Rinne keeps stopping almost everything he sees it won’t be a problem.

New Jersey Devils: John Moore got smoked by Alex Ovechkin for that amazing goal and also may need x-rays on his arm after blocking another Ovechkin shot. The lesson here? Don’t play against Alex Ovechkin.

New York Islanders: Islanders fans became the first of many this season to remind Patrick Kane about his ongoing rape investigation. Hopefully he has to answer questions about it every day.

New York Rangers: As long as Henrik Lundqvist keeps stopping 94 percent of the shots he faces, the Rangers are free to give up 37 a night and still have a chance to win.

Ottawa Senators: Leave it to the Leafs and Senators to not score in 3-on-3 and go to the season’s first shootout. Nothing in this sport is worse than the Battle of Ontario.

Philadelphia Flyers: When you have a players-only meeting two games into the season, that’s good, right?

Pittsburgh Penguins: This Phil Kessel goal is perhaps the quintessential Phil Kessel goal: taken at full speed, unstoppable, and in a loss.

San Jose Sharks: Marc-Edouard Vlasic already has 672 career games played? This feels impossible. How old am I?

St. Louis Blues: Generally not advisable to concede twice in 21 seconds in a tie game.

Tampa Bay Lightning: This rules. Go Bolts.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Tyler Bozak scored a 5-on-5 goal on Saturday. It was the first time he did so without Phil Kessel on the ice since March 2011.

Vancouver Canucks: Might want to put a body on this Gaudreau kid, guys.

Washington Capitals: Let’s just watch this about 6,000 more times in a row.

Winnipeg Jets: Nik Ehlers is so awesome and fun to watch. We are very blessed with all the young talent in this league.